Word­fees as King James is crowned bo-baas

Ku­dos for much great work done for San­lam

WIN­NING an over­seas study trip worth R100 000 is the stuff dreams are made of. This be­came re­al­ity for the King James Group last Fri­day night, when they were awarded the Pen­dor­ing Pres­tige award for a be­low-the­line cam­paign for the San­lam Musiek­fees (mu­sic fes­ti­val).

Do­minique Swiegers, one of the cam­paign’s copy­writ­ers, says: “We were ab­so­lutely over the moon when King James was an­nounced over­all win­ner.

It’s ex­cit­ing that cre­ative ideas aren’t mea­sured in me­dia si­los any more, but rather by the strength of the idea it­self. A good idea is a good idea in any medium.”

The San­lam Wo­ord­fees cam­paign con­trib­uted to King James’s spot as the Top Rank­ing SA Agency, as well as San­lam’s rank­ing as top brand for 2015, so win­ning the Pen­dor­ing Pres­tige Award – fur­ther af­fir­ma­tion of the great work King James has been do­ing with San­lam over the past year.

Their brief from San­lam was to ad­ver­tise the San­lam Musiek­fees and San­lam’s spon­sor­ship of the event at the Wo­ord­fees (word fes­ti­val) in Stel­len­bosch through branded col­lat­eral on the fes­ti­val grounds. This fol­lowed shortly af­ter San­lam had re­launched their brand and in­tro­duced their new “Wealth­smiths (TM)” pay-off line, and the cre­ative team had to in­cor­po­rate their new strate­gic po­si­tion­ing into the work.

Stephné de Vil­liers, who also worked on the cam­paign as a copy­writer, says: “We are very pas­sion­ate about Afrikaans and good Afrikaans mu­sic. As stu­dents we used to watch bands like Heuwels Fan­tasties per­form and we grew up with the mu­sic of leg­ends like Lau­rika Rauch. We were, there­fore, in­spired to bring their words to life and show­case their artistry in a way that would stand out.

“At the same time, San­lam’s staff, as masters of the cre­ation of wealth, are also pas­sion­ate about sup­port­ing artists be­cause they ap­pre­ci­ate the skill, ded­i­ca­tion and hard work that go into mas­ter­ing one’s craft. So we knew the best way of show­ing that ‘ev­ery word is a mas­ter­piece’, was to do it through some­thing that, in it­self, is a work of art.”

Do­minique and Stephné brain­stormed the idea to­gether with de­signer Ben­nett Atkin­son. Once they hit the “jack­pot” and it was ap­proved and pol­ished by their cre­ative di­rec­tors, they started de­vel­op­ing the idea by go­ing through hun­dreds of lyrics by the per­form­ing artists.

Then they had to de­cide which ar­eas in Stel­len­bosch were the most suit­able to bring the cre­ative to life on a prac­ti­cal level.

“Our pro­duc­tion team was just amaz­ing and played a very im­por­tant role in mak­ing it all hap­pen – they even man­aged to source some­one who was will­ing to cut a car in half for us,” Stephné says.

“We per­son­ally at­tended the fes­ti­val to see the in­stal­la­tions ‘in ac­tion’ and it was great to see how pos­i­tively the pub­lic re­acted to them, pre­cisely be­cause they were un­ex­pected in an en­vi­ron­ment clut­tered with loads of posters and ban­ners ad­ver­tis­ing shows. In ad­di­tion, they were very en­ter­tain­ing and clearly the clas­sic and fa­mil­iar lyrics evoked feel­ings of nos­tal­gia.

“Hav­ing a client like San­lam is equally re­ward­ing. The com­pany is for­ward-think­ing, not only in terms of the prod­ucts they of­fer to help peo­ple pre­pare for their fu­ture, but in every­thing they do, so they love in­no­va­tive think­ing. Right from the out­set they were just as ex­cited by the con­cept as we were.”

Be­sides be­ing awarded the Pres­tige Award, the win­ning team also won gold in the cat­e­gory Live Events and Ac­ti­va­tions and Di­rect Communications, earn­ing an ex­tra R6 000.

The judg­ing panel sung the win­ning cam­paign’s praises.

“It was most pleas­ing to see an Afrikaans cam­paign con­cep­tu­alised and ex­e­cuted in a mod­ern and top­i­cal way. It felt thor­oughly au­then­tic, was dif­fi­cult to ig­nore and not re­motely sales-di­rected. In­stead, it evoked a strong in­cli­na­tion to par­tic­i­pate,” says Leon Ja­cobs, jury chair­man and ex­ec­u­tive cre­ative di­rec­tor of Havas Boon­dog­gle, Cape Town.

BULLISH: South African ad cre­ativ­ity is alive and well, judg­ing from this en­try for Scrabble in the stu­dent cateogry of the an­nual Pen­dor­ing awards.

MU­SI­CAL: The King James Group won the Pen­dor­ing Pres­tige award for their San­lam Mu­sic Fes­ti­val cam­paign.